Protecting the integrity of digital signatures is an important problem. Many digital signatures rely on cryptographic keys that are controlled by a central authority. The central authority maintains control over the cryptographic keys which are used to generate digital signatures and perform other cryptographic operations. For many large businesses, a central authority operates as part of a distributed computing environment, and cryptographic operations are performed by a variety of computing entities on behalf of the central authority. In such environments, the various computing entities acting on behalf of the central authority may apply digital signatures using a cryptographic key associated with the central authority. Therefore, controlling the distribution of cryptographic keys from the central authority to the various computing entities that act on behalf of the central authority is an important problem.